Article,
Translation and Language Power Relations in Heterolingual Anthologies of Literature
Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction/International Journal of Translation, (2012)
Abstract
The heterolingual literary anthology is a discursive field through which we can observe language power relations in a plurilingual society as well as changes in such relations over time. Within this kind of anthology, translation serves as a mechanism in the negotiation of symbolic capital among various languages, and becomes an ideological site where languages struggle for visibility and prestige. In a struggle of this kind, languages engage one another in exchanges, either asymmetric or symmetric, in an attempt to move towards the centre of the sociolinguistic polysystem, or otherwise enhance their central position in the polysystem by relegating competing languages to the periphery. Drawing on Even Zohar’s polysystem theory and Pascale Casanova’s conception of literary translation as unequal linguistic exchanges, one may thus propose that complex sociolinguistic transactions underlie the making of a heterolingual literary anthology, and that such transactions may be described and explained by means of conceptual models.
